Spam Blocked

Subscribe to "Joyce Clark Unfiltered"

Enter your email address to subscribe.

Email Address

About Joyce Clark

Contact information for Councilmember Joyce Clark
Home: 623-772-9795
Cell: 602-320-3422
Office: 623-930-2249
Please call between the hours of 9 AM - 5 PM
Email:
clarkjv@aol.com
jclark@glendaleaz.com
Joyce Clark is a 49 year resident of Glendale. She has a BA in History and Education and graduated from the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. Her past careers include teacher of high school history, small business ownership of a book store, a professional ceramist and was the founder of a retail craft gallery. Joyce and her husband, Charles, have three children and seven grandchildren.

Joyce was first elected as your Yucca district Councilmember in 1992 and served Glendale and the Yucca district from 1992 to 1996. Joyce took a four year break from public service when her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s to personally care for her. In 2000 she successfully ran again for Yucca district councilmember as a write in candidate against the incumbent. She is the only candidate in Arizona to achieve a write in victory over an incumbent. She was your voice for the Yucca district for 16 years.

Joyce retired in December, 2012, and as a private citizen Joyce did many of the things she never had the time to pursue. Two of those are the tender care and feeding of her koi pond and blog writing on issues in Glendale, Arizona.

In March of 2016, Joyce announced that she would leave retirement and run for the Yucca district council seat in Glendale. Once again Joyce defeated an incumbent and on December 13, 2016 she took office as the Yucca district councilmember for another four year term, ending in December of 2020.

Joyce is the only elected official in the State of Arizona to have defeated an incumbent as a write-in candidate and then to defeat a second, different incumbent as a candidate.

This is the proposed casino’s reality. Fort McDowell Casino is currently running ads that offer Prime Rib on Tuesdays for $6.99 and Crab Legs on Wednesdays and Thursdays for $7.99. It’s not possible for a Yard House, Gordon Biersch, McFadden’s or Saddle Ranch Chop House at Westgate to offer these prices.

You will not see prices like these at the Westgate restaurants for very good reasons: sales tax and regulatory costs. You see, these restaurants have to collect federal, state, county and Glendale sales tax. The Glendale portion of the restaurant sales tax is 3.9%. When state and county taxes are added the total rate is 11.2%.What sales tax does the proposed Tohono O’odham casino with its planned restaurants pay? Nada…zip…nothing.

The icing on the cake is that the Glendale city council just voted to make the temporary sales tax increase permanent…just another stake in the hearts of these restaurants.

Add to the unlevel playing field of all kinds of taxes paid by businesses in Westgate the myriad of federal, state and local regulations with which these businesses must comply. It eats into Westgate businesses’ profits to do so. As a sovereign nation the TO is not required to comply with federal, state, county or local regulations. What regulatory costs does the proposed Tohono O’odham casino bear? Nada…zip…nothing.

TV Channel 5 weekly runs a “Dirty Dining” segment with recent results of inspections of restaurants in Maricopa County. Have you ever seen a Tribal restaurant inspection review? Of course not. Tribal reservations are not subject to these kinds of inspections. They are not subject to federal (OSHA), state, county or local health, safety and welfare regulations because they are a reservation and have sovereign immunity…consider the reservation as a foreign country planted within Glendale. A call placed to the Maricopa County Department of Environmental Services revealed that it has no jurisdiction over tribal restaurants and the Indian tribes regulate themselves. What regulations are there to protect the health, safety and welfare of the casino’s workers and patrons? Nada…zip…nothing.

What do you bet one of the very first elements the Tohono O’odham (TO) will build is paved parking lots. Why, you ask? So they can undercut parking prices for Cardinals games, hockey games and other non-sporting events held at Glendale’s arena, less than a mile away. Is there anything that can prevent the TO from offering cheap parking? Nada…zip…nothing.

I can see it now…shuttle busses packed to the gills disgorging seniors coming from the Sun Cities and Youngtown, spending their time playing bingo and the slots, then partaking of a buffet lunch or dinner before being whisked back to whence they came, never seeing the light of day at Westgate or Tanger Outlets.

Recently I received over the Indian gaming transom some reliable estimates of what the proposed TO casino is projected to earn in revenue. The numbers are astounding. The numbers offered are not carved in stone but are reasonable estimates provided by people who would know within the industry. Estimates provided are that a new casino in Glendale would earn between six hundred million dollars and seven hundred million dollars a year in gross revenue.

It is estimated that the Tohono O’odham’s net will be half that amount (50%) or three hundred to three hundred and fifty million dollars a year. The net amount reflects the subtraction of all costs associated with O&M as well as an amount of 1% to 8% of the tribe’s gross gaming revenue to the state. To put that in some kind of perspective, it is estimated the TO will net a million dollars a day. Think about that…a million dollars a day.

Which leads to the question of why do the 32,000 members of the TO Nation average an income of $8,000 a year as Chairman Norris testified, under oath, before the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs this past week, “Most of our reservation land is located in remote isolated areas and our population is one of the poorest in the United States with average individual incomes of just over $8000.” The Tohono O’odham have 3 casinos operating in southern Arizona. Their website says, “The Desert Diamond Casino, owned and operated by the Tohono O’odham Nation, provides three exciting entertainment venues in Southern Arizona: Desert Diamond Casino (Nogales Highway), Desert Diamond Casino (I-19 & Pima Mine Rd) and Golden Ha:san Casino (Why, AZ).” It goes on to say, “The mission of the casinos is to provide the means for a better quality of life for Tohono O’odham Nation and all people in Southern Arizona.” If the TO are netting even a portion of these revenue estimates from its three southern Arizona casinos, why is part of the net not distributed to the Nation’s members by the Tribal leadership to reduce the poverty rates of its 32,000 members?

It is widely known that 4 Glendale councilmembers directed staff to negotiate with the Tohono O’odham and the results will be discussed at their August 5, 2014 workshop. Rumor has it that the city council has negotiated something in the neighborhood of $100,000 from the TO. That’s got to be a joke. If it turns out to be true, once again, Glendale’s city council will get snookered…this time by the TO…all the while congratulating staff for their work and patting themselves on the back.

They should demand…not ask…demand a 5% payment of the Tohono O’odham’s annual net revenue earned by all of the development placed on that site. It has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? What does 5% equal? How about $15,000,000 a year? Doesn’t that number sound familiar? It’s the same amount the city must pay annually to IceArizona under the management agreement. It would certainly go a long way to relieving the tremendous financial pressure the city faces annually as a result of that payment to IceArizona.

Are Glendale residents willing to sell their souls and bear yet another financial burden for not only a token payment but for the TO’s highly inflated numbers of temporary construction jobs and low-paying service industry jobs? Is this city council while pandering to a small number of extremely vocal residents that desperate and gullible? Is this the best that we can expect from our city council?

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which is in accordance with Title 17 U.S. C., Section 107. The material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democratic, scientific and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law and who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use,’ you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.

Like this:

Related

4 Comments

Hi Joyce,
Great job on research for this article. I also oppose the tribe possessing trust land in Glendale and have made the same general points regarding the absence of control over anything the tribe does on the property. I’ve sited the recent debate regarding bill boards along the 101 as an examle of how sovereign immunity would insulate the tribe from Glendale regulatory control. I predicted how the tribe could place a digital bill board half the size of a football field on the property and there would be nothing the city could do about it. Well, much to my surprise, while driving down the east leg of the 101 last night I discovered the Talking Stick has covered the outside of their hotel with neon or LED lights. Never mind a large bill board, how about a 10 story glow in the dark building to set the mood for the residents in the area. Also, how about the owner of the Bunny Ranch, who just offered Phoenix $500,000 to erect a ranch in Phoenix to service the Supper Bowl, makes the same offer to the TO Nation. Proponents of the casino say, that’s ridiculous, they’ll never do that. Well, the Coyotes were never supposed to go bankrupt and neither was Westgate. Right Path Development was intending to develop the area arround Camelback Ranch but they are gone. Things happens and once the ball starts rolling down the hill it’s very hard to stop.

Excellent response Van! I’m with you all the way. I hadn’t thought about the additional activities that could occur on that property-as long as the TO’s agree. How about a mega illegal drug dispensary,etc. ? I really don’t know if the TO’s are bound by any federal laws on their land- if not the sky’s the limit..

Wow Joyce,
I never even thought of “Dirty Dining”. I usually enjoy your blog, but this time I am SOOOO hoping you are off the mark. Unfortunately I bet you are hitting it on the head. As I have said, casinos by their very nature are hostile to surrounding businesses, but looking at what you and Van DiCarlo (Candidate for Council in the Cholla District) have brought up, it is even worse. Yes they make their money inside the walls they erect, but they take it from anyone in the vicinity as well.

I especially like the statement of how all the “West Valley Mayors support the casino”, well of course they do, it is in Glendale. The only impact on Peoria is being able to advertise a casino only 15 minutes drive from their sports and entertainment district. A nice day trip for their visitors. I wonder how supportive they would be if it was in the middle of the Peoria Sports Complex?

As for staff “negotiating” $100,000 dollars a year, have they thought about the 1 million dollars in new police vehicles and fire trucks that the Gila River Tribes have given this year? If we support this casino, do you still think they are going to look so favorably on us next year?